If you had any doubts about Rupert Murdoch's determination to take total control of BSkyB, and total ownership of its profits, they should have vanished now.
In pursuit of the 61% of Sky he doesn't already own, he's been willing to sacrifice a 168-year-old newspaper, and sack two-hundred journalists who, let's be honest, hadn't themselves done anything wrong.

Sacking Rebekah Brooks seemed the most likely way Murdoch would try to draw a line under what's been a shameful week for his operation. But his determination to protect her seems almost as strong as his desire to bank those Sky profits.

And how long do you think it'll be before the Sun on Sunday is on sale? 2.6million readers will be looking for an alternative paper in ten days' time, and Murdochs, Snr and Jnr, won't want to lose them to the Star, Mirror or Mail.

It's a cynical, in some ways desperate, ploy to move the story on. A grand gesture after a week in which most people's view of journalism sank lower than ever before.

Outside the media, most people frankly couldn't care less if actresses, politicians and TV presenters had their phones hacked. Demands for privacy are a little harder to take from someone earning six, or seven, figures.

But hacking into a missing schoolgirl's phone, giving her parents false hope she was alive when she'd already been murdered, is to most people inconceivable.

As inconceivable, in fact, as the claim that editor of the newspaper at the time this was going on had no idea it was happening.

All the evidence since the News of the World's fate was sealed suggests the ploy won't work. Certainly not while Rebekah Brooks remains at News International.

In the closure statement, James Murdoch admits the company misled Parliament, albeit he says by accident - MPs will doubtless want to pursue that.

And he also admits the vast majority of staff at the News of the World today had nothing to do with phone hacking. Entirely innocent people are losing their jobs to cover the sins of others either long gone or close enough to the top to earn protection.

Maybe, in the end, the News of the World couldn't be saved. Many major advertisers had walked away. It's biggest advertiser stayed loyal though. That company? BSkyB.

Would the Government dare hand Rupert Murdoch the prize he so desperately seeks? Right now his influence has never seemed weaker. But in 2015, with a General Election on the way... scandals fade, boycotts never last that long, but Rupert Murdoch bears grudges.